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A freelance videographer has settled a civil rights lawsuit against the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Police Department, after he was arrested following an order by a police sergeant to stop taping the arrest of a suspect, reports CBS New York.

Philip Datz worked for Stringer News Service, which sells video to television stations and other news outlets. He claimed in his federal lawsuit that his arrest in 2011 obstructed him from doing his job.

Datz said the settlement requires Suffolk County to pay him $200,000. The county legislature approved spending the money in a vote on Tuesday.

I agree filming is not a crime, don't know the facts so I wont judge unlike Lenny. I am not pleased since now the tax payers have to shell out 200K for this. What was the damage? If this was truly about the right to film then the judgement in his favor would be enough, no need for him to milk the tax payers of the $200K. I'm sick of people who have NO REAL IN JURY sue and get paid $ then say the court action was "for principle". Thats so much BS its all about money and this camera man is a whore like the rest of them that do this. IF there was REAL damage, injury, loss of money, loss to his reputation (like news people really have one anyway) then fine but he didn't lose a single thing and now NY tax payers shell the $ out to this whore "journalist". Sad

dan l @ 6/21/2014 7:34 PM

It's called punitive damages, kev. You levy the fine to dissuade anyone else from doing it in the future.

Capt, Crunch @ 6/21/2014 8:41 PM

@ Lenny, you made a blanket statement stating " filming is not a crime". You are wrong it is against the law to film in a public restroom, a couples bedroom, without their consent certain juvenile incidents and many more. So please have all the facts before you make damaging remarks. Also you said Datz, should have got more. How much more and how did you calculate this?

S.S. @ 6/24/2014 7:12 AM

Capt. your wasting your time by talking to that tool lenny. We all know what she's like. Plus it's not like she counts anyways he's a canadian. They're so ass-backwards over there it's not even funny. The officer should've known better, but now he knows, hopefully it doesn't happen again.

Ryan @ 7/5/2014 4:25 PM

Capt way to take his statement to the nth degree. Everyone knows you can't videotape people in the bathroom, he doesn't have to be that explicit, things like that go without saying and you only type it for the sake of arguing. Filming is not illegal IN THE CONTEXT OF WHAT HAPPENED IN THE VIDEO

What are you going to say next??

henry @ 7/10/2014 5:04 PM

that's the double standard we have between cops and citizens, cops can do anything to protect themselves whether its legal or not but when a citizen does it we better stop it or we are going to jail. If cops can film or record to protect themselves, who's going to protects us from them

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